[Photography as evidence, between medicine and religion]

Are we right to establish a parallel between, on the one hand, Bernadette Soubirous, the pious visionary of Lourdes, and Thérèse Martin, the nun of Lisieux, and on the other hand, the hysterical women who were shown in public by Charcot at the "Salpêtrière Hospital"? If we compare the way all of them were photographed, we bring to light something similar between two facts: I. - the attempts to give a new medical significance to religious-ordinarily speaking-poses; 2 - the attempts to give a particular religious significance to common body positions. So we are led to suggest meaningful changes in the links between medicine and religion, expressed by the language of women's bodies.